by Tori Bovalino

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Christina Rossetti was a hell of a poet. “In An Artist’s Studio” is surely the cruelest verse ever composed about a sister-in-law. I’ve long loved her “Goblin Market”, even if it does trade in antisemitic imagery.

Bovalino imagines a fascinating problem: how would modern girls react to the Goblin Market? Whether you think the forbidden fruit is lesbian love or the renunciation of christ’s yoke, it’s going to play differently today than in 1862.

18 years ago, May Wickett was an apprentice witch, a defender of York from the annual underground market. May doesn’t really want to be a witch, but it’s a family duty. A sudden personnel crisis moves up the date of her initiation, and suddenly there’s not going to be a lovely time at University, far from the cares of home. In a week, she’ll be a professional witch and have no time or anything else. Then Eitra, a beautiful goblin girl walks into the pub.

Now, May and her sister have been banished from York. They live in Back Bay, with May helping to raise her 17-year-old niece Lou. Lou is a modern girl, sophisticatedly asex, impatient of her mother’s weird superstitious puttering with salt lines on the sills and iron charms on the doors. Then her beloved aunt Neela (who is the same age as Lou) leaves a message on Lou’s iPhone: she’s stuck in the market and cannot escape.

There are problems here, but it does draw a fascinating contrast between yesterday’s girl, who is wrapped up in liberation and love, and today’s girl, who doesn’t need to be liberated and doesn’t much want to know what love is. Bovalino doesn’t pull punches: if the girl you love turns out to be covered in thorns, you’re going to learn about an S&M kink you didn’t know you had. (Eitra, in turn, discovers sugar.) I think more might be done with this material, but this was a lot of fun.

by Naomi Kritzer

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Recommended by Cory Doctorow, who writes:

There's so much sf about "competent men" running their families with entrepreneurial zeal, clarity of vision and a firm confident hand. But there's precious little fiction about how much being raised by a Heinlein dad would suuuck.

Beck Garrison is fifteen. She’s grown up on a Libertarian Seastead: no taxes, no police, no schools. She finds stuff for people to pick up spending money, which is an ideal setup for an opportunity to find what everything really means. This is a fixup of a series of short stories, and a lot of fun.

by Lydia Kiesling

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At the start of this book, Bunny West is a sullen teenager daughter of a US Foreign Service Officer, currently posted to a Baku at the start of the oil boom. At the end, she’s a grandmother, and the oil industry for which she has worked for decades as pretty effectively wrecked the planet. Reminiscent of Olive Kittredge, this is a fine book.

by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

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Among the best of the sprawling Liaden series and one of Linda’s favorites, this book sure has its moments. Come for the sentient turtles, stay for the tree-protecting computer that time forgot. Characteristically for this team, this is a family story: the clan is in trouble, we have to pull together against shady outside hostility and perverse mischance, and at the end we hope to find the grownups are still (at least nominally) in charge.

by Jorge Arango

A fine introduction to information gardening for beginners, with tips of selecting and using contemporary tools and sensible fallbacks for those who prefer paper. Good intros to Obsidian and Tinderbox are well situated in a discussion of the purpose of notes and the role of notebooks in thinking clearly.